Enthusiastic celebration at Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus this morning, as a large crowd that included Gov. Bill Haslam broke ground for a new building for Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc., the research-and-development park's first private tenant.

"Mission fulfilled!" UT President Joe DiPietro told jubilant well-wishers, adding that he's eagerly anticipating the next announcements of new buildings on the research campus.

Others referred to today's annoucement as "a milestone" and as "a game-changer."

Cherokee Farm is unique. It's the only R&D park in the Southeast that's affiliated with a major research university, the University of Tennessee, and a national research lab, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc. will be occupying roughly half of a new 46,000-square-foot building, being developed by Partners Development with Blaine Construction and BarberMcMurray.

Cherokee Farm is now anchored by the 144,000-square-foot Joint Institute for Advanced Materials, a research center now partially occuiped but scheduled to come fully online mid-summer.